Val is Unprogressive and Unresponsive

Electronic gewgaws and I are not simpatico.

I would gladly welcome the return of quill pen, parchment, and courier for communication purposes. This texting business is for the birds! And I don't mean those dear sweet carrier pigeons. My fingers are not nimble, and that auto correct feature is not on my wavelength. Let's return to our paper trail roots. I have enough to feel guilty about without letting my email cool its heels unattended for unreasonable periods of time.

That's what always happens to me, you know. I can't have my cell phone at work. Can't check personal email. It has to wait. And of course at the end of the day, I find out that I received a semi-important email just two scant minutes after first bell. That means that a person has been finger-tapping and jaw-clenching in the vast teeming waiting room of cyberspace for nigh on eight hours! Sitting there, reading three-year-old magazines, fending off the overflowing fat of new seat partners, resisting the urge to tell people how to control their children, shrinking from the sticky fingers of aggressive toddlers, breath-holding to avoid inhaling the droplet spray of coughers and sneezers. It's a wonder my electronic communicants don't chuck the whole Val thing and court a more receptive recipient.

Perhaps I exaggerate a bit. Inflate my importance. For all I know, that email was sent and forgotten, like tossing last night's corn cobs off the back porch for the chickens to enjoy. Or maybe the sender dropped it in my inbox on the way to the mall to wreak havoc with shopkeepers, jamming Orange Julius straws up both nostrils and acting like a walrus, or posing inappropriately with mannequins at Old Navy. Time may not be of the essence at all.

Still, I like to be prompt. To treat an email like an RSVP. You know what THAT means, don't you? Respond so very promptly. That's what Shirley Feeney told Laverne DeFazio. I think it was the episode where they were guinea pig lab rats in a sleep/hunger study to get money to go to a fancy party. Wherein Laverne fell asleep and did a forward roll in her cocktail dress, and Shirley pounced on a morsel of food that had dropped to the floor. Ahh. Good times.

Back in the days when mail was mail.